This invention relates to a teaseling and/or fluffing machine for fabric and knitwork with improved suction and cleaning.
Known teaseling and/or fluffing machines are composed essentially of one or more drums rotating with predetermined direction and speed, along their circumference there being housed a certain number of teaseling and/or fluffing rollers. If the rollers are teaseling rollers they are embraced by cloth carrying needles projecting alternately in the same direction as the fabric (with the pile) and in the opposite direction (against the pile), these rollers rotating about respective longitudinal axes under independent control. The same applies to fluffing rollers, which carry an abrasive paper covering instead of cloth carrying needles. These rollers also rotate with predeterminable speed and direction.
During its operation, the machine produces a considerable quantity of down, filaments and dust some of which deposit between the needles of teaseling machines or on the abrasive paper of fluffing machines, and some of which escape into the environment, especially the dust.
Although no collection system is provided in the machine for the dust which escapes into the environment, there is generally an arrangement consisting of a pair of sector brushes for cleaning the teaseling and/or fluffing elements.
Depending on their type, the sectors are used either for the with-pile rollers or for the against-pile rollers, and operate in phase with the drum during the short passage of the relative teaseling and/or fluffing rollers through the relative brush region.
The filaments or fibres removed from the brushes are then collected via a suction device having an inlet opening positioned below the brushes.
Apart from the need to solve the environmental problem by providing the machine with collection systems suitable for the particular case, it is also necessary to provide the machine with a more efficient brushing system. It should also be noted that teaseling and/or fluffing machines are virtually identical in terms of their layout. They have the drum at the top, the brushes at the bottom and the suction inlet below the brushes.
The reason for this layout is to enable the fibres and filaments to fall downwards by gravity in order to improve cleaning.
However it has proved not to be so in reality because the air movement deriving from the rotation of the drum and the teaseling and/or fluffing rollers and the movement of the fabric means that the brushing and suction system collects only those fibres deriving from the needles or the abrasive paper of the relative teaseling and/or fluffing rollers.